Assawalhy

Building Arabi.js — Arabizing JavaScript

javascript open-source arabization

One of my most ambitious projects was Arabi.js — a tool that transforms JavaScript syntax to support Arabic keywords. The idea was simple but powerful: what if you could write JavaScript in Arabic?

The Motivation

As someone who grew up in Egypt, I noticed that many beginner programmers struggle with the English-centric nature of programming languages. While English proficiency is important in tech, the initial barrier of learning programming concepts AND a foreign language simultaneously can be overwhelming.

Technical Approach

Arabi.js works by leveraging the Babel.js parser. Here’s the high-level approach:

  1. Parsing: We use a modified PEG.js grammar to recognize Arabic keywords
  2. Transformation: The Arabic tokens are mapped to their English JavaScript equivalents
  3. Code Generation: Standard JavaScript is generated that can run in any environment

Example

// Arabic
دالة مرحبا(اسم) {
    اطبع("مرحباً يا " + اسم);
}

// Translates to:
function hello(name) {
    console.log("مرحباً يا " + name);
}

Challenges

The biggest challenge was handling bidirectional text (BiDi). Arabic is written right-to-left, but code structure is inherently left-to-right (brackets, operators, etc.). Finding the right balance was tricky.

Impact

While Arabi.js is primarily an educational tool, it demonstrates an important principle: programming should be accessible to everyone, regardless of their native language.

The project received positive feedback from the Arabic developer community and sparked interesting discussions about programming language localization.